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Making man out of monkeys

Published: 22 August 2000(GMT+10)

The bitterest pill to swallow for any Christian who attempts to “make peace”
with Darwin is the presumed animal ancestry of man. Even many Christians who uncritically
accept evolutionary dogma as “God’s way of creating” try to elevate
man and his origin above that of the beasts. Evolutionists attempt to soften the
blow by assuring us that man didn’t exactly evolve from apes (tailless monkeys)
but rather from ape-like creatures. This is mere semantics, as may be seen
from the fact that many of the presumed animal ancestors of man have been given
scientific names which include the word pithecus (derived from the Greek
meaning ape) just like many living apes. The much touted “human ancestor”
commonly known as “Lucy,” for example, has the scientific name Australopithecus
afarensis (meaning southern ape from the Afar triangle of Africa), though
evolutionists often refer to this ape as a “woman”! But what exactly
is the evidence for the ape ancestry of man and how compelling is it?

The first and most important thing we should understand is that evolutionists begin
with the assumption that man has in fact evolved from apes. No paleoanthropologist
(one who studies the fossil evidence for man’s origin) would dare to seriously
raise the question “did man evolve from apes?” The only permissible
question is “from which apes did man evolve?” Since evolutionists
generally do not believe that man evolved from any ape that is now living, they
look to extinct apes in the fossil record to provide them with their desired evidence.
Specifically, they look for any anatomical feature that looks “intermediate”
between that of apes and man. Fossil apes having such features are declared to be
ancestral to man (or at least collateral relatives) and are called hominids.
Living apes, on the other hand, are not considered to be “hominids”
they only sort of look like humans. Still, evolutionists are willing to
accept certain trivial similarities between extinct apes and men as “proof”
of ancestry.

Fossils of so-called “hominids” are typically fragmentary and sufficiently
rare that even many who presume to study the origin of man have never actually handled
one. Many scientific papers on human evolution are based on only casts of original
specimens (or even on published photos, measurements, and descriptions of them).
Naturally, there is a great premium on first-hand studies of real “hominid”
fossils but such opportunities are typically confined to those lucky enough to find
them, and the chosen few they permit to handle their fragile specimens. Since there
is much more prestige in finding an ancestor of man than an ancestor of living apes
(or worse yet, merely an extinct ape), there is immense pressure on paleoanthropologists
to decide in favor of “hominid” status for any of the exceedingly rare,
ape-like fossils they find. It would seem that the living apes have pretty much
been left to find their own ancestors.

With rare exception, primate fossils consist of bones and teeth rather than the
soft organs of the body. Because of their relative hardness, teeth, jaws and basal
skull fragments are the most frequently found primate fossils. Much of the evidence
for the ape ancestry of man is based on similarities in teeth and jaws. In contrast
to man, apes tend to have large incisor and canine teeth which are relatively larger
than their molars. In addition, there is typically a broad gap between the incisor
and canine teeth of apes. Finally, the jaws tend to be more U-shaped in apes and
more parabolic (like the St. Louis Arch) in man.

One of the problems in identifying evolutionary “intermediates” is the
normal range of variations that occur among both fossil and living species of apes
and humans. The normal human jaw, for example, may vary among individuals from parabolic
(human-like) to U-shaped (ape-like), while some living species of apes, like the
Galada baboons, have relatively large molars (human-like). It seems almost certain
that teeth tell us more about an organism’s diet and feeding habits than its
supposed evolution. Still, impressionable artists have not hesitated to illustrate
entire “apemen” from nothing more than a single tooth. In the early
1920’s, the “apeman” Hesperopithecus (which consisted
of a single tooth) was pictured in the London Illustrated News complete
with the tooth’s wife, children, domestic animals, and cave! This tooth, known
as “Nebraska man” was still used by evolutionists as compelling evidence
for human evolution during the time of the Scopes trial in 1925, but in 1927 parts
of the skeleton were found and Nebraska man was downgraded to an extinct pig!

The most eagerly sought after evidence in fossil “hominids” is any anatomical
feature that suggests bipedality (the ability to walk on two legs). Humans
walk in a bipedal fashion (as do birds and kangaroos), so any evidence of bipedality
in fossil apes is considered by evolutionists to be compelling evidence for human
ancestry. The distinctive human gait requires the complex integration of many skeletal
and muscular features in our hips, legs and feet. Thus, evolutionists closely examine
the hip bones (pelvis), thigh bones (femur), leg bones (tibia
and fibula), and foot bones (especially the toes) of fossil apes in an
effort to detect any anatomical features consistent with bipedality.

Evolutionists are particularly interested in the angle at which the femur and the
tibia meet at the knee (called the carrying angle). Humans are able to
keep their weight over their feet while walking because their femurs converge toward
the knees forming a carrying angle of approximately 9 degrees with the tibia (we’re
sort of knock-kneed). In contrast, chimpanzees and gorillas have widespread legs
with a carrying angle of essentially 0 degrees. These animals manage to keep their
weight over their feet when walking by swinging their body from side to side in
the familiar “ape-walk.” Evolutionists assume that fossil apes with
a high carrying angle (human-like) were bipedal and thus evolving into man. The
south African australopithicines (like Lucy) are considered to be our ancestors
largely because they had a carrying angle of 15 degrees. Many evolutionists now
argue, however, that this high carrying angle might actually indicate that australopithicines
were adept tree climbers! Among nonhuman living primates, the highest carrying
angles (values comparable to man) are found in the orangutan and spider monkey—both
exceptionally adept tree climbers though capable of at least a clumsy bipedal gait
on the ground. The point is that there are living tree-dwelling apes and
monkeys with some of the same anatomical features that evolutionists consider as
evidence for bipedality, yet no one suggests that these animals are either our ancestors
or descendants.

Australopithicines (especially “Lucy”) are often depicted as having
hands and feet identical to modern man which, if true, might strongly suggest human
ancestry. A live-appearing mannequin of “Lucy” in the Living World exhibit
at the St. Louis Zoo, for example, shows virtually human hands and feet on a shapely
(though hairy) human-like female body with an obviously ape-like head. Lucy stands
erect in a deeply pensive pose with her right elbow resting on the wrist of her
crooked left arm and with her right forefinger curled under her chin, her eyes gazing
off into the distance as if she were contemplating the mind of Newton. Any uncritical
visitor seeing this exhibit would be inclined to think they had seen a true “apewoman.”
Few visitors are aware that this is a misrepresentation of what is known about the
fossil ape Australopithecus afarensis. While the “Lucy” fossil
itself lacks both hands and feet, several other known specimens of A. afarensis
include these important bones and all show evidence of the long curved fingers and
toes characteristic of tree dwelling primates. Paleoanthropologists Jack Stern and
Randall Sussman (American Journal of Physical Anthropology, vol. 60, pages
279–317, 1983) have reported that the hands of this species are “surprisingly
similar to hands found in the small end of the pygmy chimpanzee-common chimpanzee
range.” They report that the feet, like the hands, are “long, curved
and heavily muscled” much like those of living primates that engage in tree
climbing as well as bipedality. The authors remind us that no living primate has
such hands and feet “for any purpose other than to meet the demands of full
or part-time arboreal (tree dwelling) life.”

We have seen how evolutionists have used australopithicines to make man out of monkeys,
in our next installment we will see how they have used Neandertal man to make monkeys
out of men.

Originally published in St. Louis MetroVoice, Vol. 5, No. 2, Feb. 1995.

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